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When, at the end of Alien, Sigourney Weaver says, "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off," she's not telling the whole truth. Because there's another survivor, curled up with her in the hypersleep capsule. Jones (or Jonesey, or Jonesy) the ginger tom.

Jones serves multiple functions within the Alien storyline:

1) CATGUFFIN, a pretext for characters to go wandering off on their own.2) CATPANION, an excuse for Ripley to express herself out loud when she's otherwise alone.3) CATSHOCK, a cheap shock tactic in which the cat jumps out unexpectedly.4) CATSCALLION, a wild card; at the end of the film, the cat might yet be harbouring an alien.

In short, one cannot overestimate the importance of Jones to Alien. This is his story.

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ANNE BILLSON is a film critic, novelist, photographer, style icon, wicked spinster, evil feminist, and international cat-sitter who has lived in London, Tokyo, Paris and Croydon, and now lives in Brussels. She likes frites, beer and chocolate.

Her books include SUCKERS (an upwardly mobile vampire novel), STIFF LIPS (a Notting Hill ghost story), THE EX (a supernatural detective story) and THE COMING THING (Rosemary's Baby meets Bridget Jones) as well as several works of non-fiction, including BILLSON FILM DATABASE, BREAST MAN: A CONVERSATION WITH RUSS MEYER, and monographs on the films THE THING and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

Her latest book is CATS ON FILM, the definitive work of feline film scholarship.

She sometimes writes about film for the Guardian, and is currently working on a screenplay and a sequel to her vampire novel, SUCKERS. She has three blogs: multiglom.com (the Billson Blog), catsonfilm.net (a blog about cats in the cinema), and lempiredeslumieres.com (photographs of Belgian beer, bars and sunsets).